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Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:02:03 +0100
From: Gautier Write-only <gautier@fakeaddress.nil>
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Subject: Clause "with and use"
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Date: 2003-10-31T22:02:03+01:00
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Peter Hermann's post about number_base reminds me on a suggestion of mine
about a "with and use" clause in AC ! Comments are welcome...
Original proposal follows:
____

Proposal for a "with and use" clause 

 Hello! 

 Almost the only thing I find tedious in Ada is the obligation 
 to name twice packages you intend to _use_ in a context_clause. 
 I illustrate with examples two usual ways of organizing context clauses: 

 (A) 

 -- (1) With'ed only 
 with Ada.Command_Line; 

 -- (2) With'ed and Use'd 
 with Ada.Text_IO, Ada.Integer_Text_IO, Ada.Float_Text_IO; 
 use Ada.Text_IO, Ada.Integer_Text_IO, Ada.Float_Text_IO; 

 Problem: in practice the list pair (2) is a lot longer (many many lines) and 
         becomes difficult to synchronize. It is also difficult then to 
         _verify_ that the pair is consistent 

 (B) 

 -- (1) With'ed only 
 with Ada.Command_Line; 

 -- (2) With'ed and Use'd 
 with Ada.Text_IO;                       use Ada.Text_IO; 
 with Ada.Integer_Text_IO;               use Ada.Integer_Text_IO; 
 with Ada.Float_Text_IO;                 use Ada.Float_Text_IO; 

 Advantage: much easier to verify and transport across sources 
 Problem: the beginning of sources becomes awfully long. 


 To sum up, I'd describe the current situation so 

 - beginner-repellent and newcomer-repellent (not to be neglected !) 
 - ugly 
 - redundant 
 - causes a readability problem and possible confusions 
 - pushes the real thing, i.e. the programming contents after 
 "procedure/package... is", too far away of the source's top 
 - needs too much administration 

 My proposal: a "with and use" clause. "with and use A[,B]" would 
 mean "with A[,B]; use A[,B]". 

 (C) 

 -- (1) With'ed only 
 with Ada.Command_Line; 

 -- (2) With'ed and Use'd 
 with and use Ada.Text_IO, Ada.Integer_Text_IO, Ada.Float_Text_IO; 

________________________________________________________
Gautier  --  http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/gsoft.htm

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